Here you go, on Fell, at Masonic, outbound of course, we see a white Prius in the middle of five lanes:

But there’s just one lane you can be in to turn left to go south on Masonic – that’s the leftmost lane, occupied by a black Honda Civic at this time. But no matter, despite the fact that the light for Fell has been green for a good 20 seconds or so, the white Prius is stopped and attempting to turn left from the middle lane, which is exactly two lanes away from where you’d want to be.

Honking ensued.

But look, the Prius driver has pulled into the neighboring lane and then straightened out. Then it stopped again. One lane down, one lane to go:

At this point, the unique ped / bike only green has gone red so this allows traffic in the left lane to turn left onto Masonic. And look who’s making an illegal left along with the Civic – it’s our friend the errant Prius:

After hearing all the honking and seeing this display of chutzpah, a pedestrian can only turn away with a chuckle:

Anyway, success of a sort – left turn completed.

And here’s the kicker – was it an UBER or a Lyft (or maybe even one of those UBER Lyfts)?

Well, looks like a Lyft.

Yes, you can drive this way in SF, all you San Mateo County-based TNC drivers. However, you will accumulate more than your fair share of moving and parking violations from the non-traffic-oriented SFPD and/or the money-hungry SFMTA MUNI DPT.

And that’s going to eat into your earnings as a Lyft driver.

And of course the legal way to do this would have been to spend a couple minutes goring forward and then making three right turns.

This kind of thing is allowed for just two hours a week, generally, during street cleaning times.

What I mean by Endorses/Permits/Tolerates is that there’s a zero chance of this ride getting ticketed over the next two hours despite the fact that it’s an automatic that two, three, or four Parking Control Officers will soon be driving past:

This is one of our SFMTA’s unwritten rules, but it’s a rule nevertheless.